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Over 100 ESOL (English for Speakers of Other Languages) students and teachers participated in an outdoor teach-out to celebrate the European Day of Languages today. The teach out took place at City Hall because we want to work with the Mayor of London and his team to make ESOL central to his plans for adult education and integration in the capital.

Students from English For Action classes across London were joined by allies from Hackney Learning Trust, City Lit, Lewisham College, CARAS, Haringey Citizens, Southwark Citizens, Share Action and Action for ESOL. There were people from all corners of the world (as well as London) and at least 15 languages spoken among us.

The teach-out was planned by EFA students Jenny and Jandira, Jenny’s daughter Alejandra and their teachers, Jess, Dermot, Anne and Amira. Jandira, originally from Angola, told the gathering about the vital importance of supporting people to learn English: “ESOL is the base, like the foundations of a building”. Next year she hopes to go to university – something that would not have been possible without ESOL.

The students all wrote personal messages to the Mayor which they assembled into a banner that said #LoveESOL.

At the same time Jenny collected signatures from everyone at the event underneath a message asking Mayor Sadiq Khan to work with us to promote ESOL in London.

Some of the students organised an impromptu march to the entrance of City Hall.

Jenny, Alejandra and Jandira went inside to deliver our message to the Mayor, who couldn’t be there to collect it personally. Next time………

Jenny, originally from Bolivia explained why so many people had come out to City Hall today:

“The ability to speak English is fundamental to participating to life in the UK and many of us need free ESOL classes because we don’t have the means to fund private lessons, so ESOL is the route to living a full dignified life here, allowing us to contribute to life in this city.”

ESOL is a community, like may others across the country, deeply affected by the Grenfell fire. Many of our students and teachers at English for Action are terrified and heartbroken in equal measure. Nasrine Malik of the Guardian writes that the victims were overwhelmingly migrants, from all parts of the world. Many of them were ESOL students. Our own students in Tower blocks in Tower Hamlets reported being able to see Grenfell burning in the distance. Others couldn’t help but picture themselves and their families when they saw the footage and heard the horrific accounts in the news. One of our students used to live in Grenfell and spent Wednesday scouring the streets for her friend, who still lives there.

How can ESOL teachers support our students and support each other at this time? And how can we channel some of the anger and thirst for change so that some justice can be done?

How can teachers support one another?

At EFA we have a staff Whatsapp Group, which has proved a really effective way to support one another, share experiences and lesson ideas. Sometimes we simply report little things that have happened in our classes, things that have been emotionally difficult or uplifting too of course, and sometimes we ask for help and ideas. It is more accessible than an email group or Facebook group and there are fewer barriers to participation.

Many of our teachers also belong to the ESOL campaign group Action for ESOL, which is another place teachers can share ideas and ask for support. ESOL teachers around the country will be dealing with students’ shock and grief and dealing with their own. We can ask each other for help and what has been effective in classes.

How can you deal with these feelings in class?

ESOL classes are really important spaces where people can talk to others about shared concerns and support each other. They are communities in their own right. It is very natural that people will want to talk about what is on their mind. This week that is likely to be Grenfell.

One way to approach it is to ask the class if they saw the horrible news this week/last week. The teacher can then gauge whether people would like to talk or not. It could be a good idea to put people into small groups so they are less exposed. The instruction could be “share some of your feelings in your group. Ask your classmates, “how are you?”.

Then you could board some of these feelings (angry, sad, overwhelmed, devastated, scared, tearful) and tell the group how your feel. Perhaps say you have lots of questions.

Students will probably have lots of questions too and could be good to put students into pairs to write down questions on sticky notes (if they have not developed the literacy skills to do this, they can create them orally and you can scribe them, walking around from pair to pair).

Questions could include:

“why did it happen?”

“who lived there?”

“how many people died?”

“how can we help?”

“what is the council doing?”

“who is responsible?”

When the students have created a lot of questions, you can cluster them as a whole class. Clusters might have two, three, four or more questions. You can add a title, like “Causes”, “Responses”, “The Future” etc.

The question ‘who is responsible’? is a really important one. You could ask students who the key players are in the Grenfell fire. Students could use their smart phones to get information. Some ideas:

– Kensington Council

– Teresa May/David Cameron

– Housing Minister (Gavin Barwell)

– Minister for Local Government and communities (Eric Pickles and now Savid Sajid Javid)

– Kensington and Chelsea Tenant Management Organisation (managing the block for the council)

– Rydon (contractor who did the £10m refurb)

– Boris Johnson and now Sadiq Khan

Students could write a sentence or two about who each person or body is and why they are responsible. They could rank who they believe to me more responsible.

Here is an article in the Guardian about the complex web of companies involved. https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2017/jun/16/manufacturer-of-cladding-on-grenfell-tower-identified-as-omnis-exteriors?CMP=share_btn_fb

It’s really important people know who is responsible for safety of their own houses. ESOL students are overwhelmingly renters and it can be really unclear who is responsible for their housing. Some people don’t know who their landlord is and the system of sub-contraction and housing associations managing council owned-properties is obfuscating (some would argue, deliberately so). Students, could check with their classmates, search on the internet or after class, check with their neighbours and housemates if they are not sure. We checked the website of Tower Hamlets Homes who manage the housing blocks of some of our students in Bow. There is already a statement about Grenfell up on their site:

There is a contact us page and next week students will prepare some questions they have for Tower Hamlets Homes and send them in during the lesson.

Possible questions:

When was the last risk assessment?

Can we have a fire safety check?

What company supplied the fire doors?

How can students take action to improve housing?

EFA have been involved in housing activism for years now. It is consistently one of the biggest priorities for our students (and teachers). In 2015 we organised a housing and ESOL day to explore how housing activists and ESOL teachers and students could work together for housing justice. We have worked really closely with Housing Action Southwark and Lambeth and had some big successes winning improved conditions for many of our students thanks to their support and relentless energy.

Here are some of the ideas our students, teachers and activist friends have had that we can do to improve housing conditions:

Learn about our rights

Organise meetings with housemates and neighbours to share concerns and make plans

build local housing action groups

Stop evictions

visit the housing department of the council

accompany people to meetings with landlords and councils

demonstrate inside the council

occupy buildings

Call the council/housing association/landlord to follow up emails

Tweet the councils/housing association to publicly shame them into fulfilling their promises or take action

You can ask your class “what action can we take to make our housing safe?” Or, “what action can we take to improve housing conditions”? It’s nice to focus on things we can do and not only things that other people can do, like government or landlords. Not to say that we need to make our own improvements but that action planning can focus on what can we do to force those responsible to act? Ask students to discuss who will do the action, why and when.

One idea that works well is to cut out symbols of action on paper or card and distribute several to students in small groups. One one side they write the action and on the other side why? who? when?

eg. Hold a community meeting to collect questions we have for our housing association

why? We need to get organised

who? Roberta and Aisha with help from neighbours

When? Before the end of June

Please share your ideas and resources with us at English for Action. Please share groups and actions that you are involved in. If Grenfell teaches us anything it is that we cannot trust the government, local authorities and private companies to look after us. We need to organise, learn and take action together to keep ourselves safe and to bring housing justice for all.

Discussing traumatic events such as terrorist attacks is always very difficult. As it’s the day after the tragic events in Manchester, EFA teachers went to class prepared for this and this is one example of how it was addressed in the classroom. This example is from one of our Entry 2/3 classes in Battersea:

As part of our class routine, we spend the first 10-15 minutes checking in with each other, which is also an opportunity for us to practise narrative tenses. I made sure that, as the teacher, I did not bring up the news from Manchester and allowed it to come up naturally in discussion, which it did. As soon as one participant started talking about it, others joined in using language to describe how the events have made them feel. Some participants hadn’t heard the news, so those who had were encouraged to fill us all in. We did this in a structured manner, trying to include contributions from as many participants as possible, while writing key words on the board such as ‘bomb’, ‘pop singer’ and ‘injuries’ (which were recycled later). Following this, I asked if participants had heard about how the community responded to the attacks, ‘people opening their doors to those affected’ and ’emergency services helping’ were some of the responses.

It was evident that we wanted to elaborate further and we agreed to do this while acknowledging the difficulties and sensitivity of the topic. We also believed that it’s important that, as members of the community, we find ways to talk about this. We used the Problem Tree tool to do this. We agreed to name the problem ‘terrorism’. The tree, drawn on flipchart paper, was divided as follows to help us dissect the problem:

The branches of the tree: effects of terrorism (how this makes us feel, how we respond as a community, what the material effects are)

The roots: the root causes of the problem

The fruit: action and how we can tackle the problem

We then placed sticky notes on the different parts as we discussed the issues.

Effects:

Most of the discussion revolved around emotions: ‘sad’, ‘angry’, ‘worried’ were examples. This also included concern for children where one participant talked about the ’emotional effect on children’. There was also acknowledgment of the hard work of emergency services. Some participants shared very personal experiences from living in different countries where they’ve experienced terrorism first-hand.

Emergent vocabulary included ‘unity’, ‘precautions’ and ‘witnesses’.

Roots:

This was the most difficult part of the discussion, however, we decided to try our best to discuss as many possible causes as possible. These ranged from ‘we don’t know’ to ‘unemployment’, from ‘wars’ to ‘radicalisation’. It was also an opportunity to discuss the likely backlash against certain communities.

Fruit:

The discussion revolved around the roles of parenting, educators, security, and availability of community services for young people. Many of us felt that the lack of spaces for young people to socialise and engage in activities in the local community needs to be addressed, so does unemployment. Improving narratives in the media, tackling violence in cartoons and spending more time with people and less time on technology were also suggestions. Crucially, as a classroom predominantly made up of mothers of young children, the focus was on the role parents can play to tackle the problem and a lot of speaking resulted from this.

We concluded on a note of solidarity with those affected by the attacks, where we collectively decided to postpone our class picnic that we were due to have as a show of solidarity.

Today, my colleagues students from English for Action and I are taking part in ‘1 Day Without Us’. This is a nationwide day of action and celebration, aimed at drawing attention to the contribution that migrants make to Britain. We see it as a celebration of the array and diversity of cultures that exist on this planet.

“I am participating in #1DayWithoutUs because I don’t think it’s good to prioritise one group of people over another”

What does it mean to take action with students? How can we make sure actions are led by learners not by teachers? How can we discuss and plan action in the ESOL classroom without imposing on students who just want to learn English? This January, English for Action staff and volunteers met up to explore these questions and share our skills, tools and ideas.

Lots of our students have noticed a rise of racism and xenophobia in recent times. Streatham in south London is one of the most ethnically and linguistically diverse parts of the city – at one time boasting more languages than anywhere in the UK.

Where better to discuss multi-lingual London? Our students in one of our Streatham classes were discussing languages in the community. One student told a story of a friend somewhere out of London who was in the supermarket, speaking Polish to her daughter, when someone came up to her and told her to “speak English”.

The following week we discussed the issue in greater depth using a technique called “problem-posing from a code”, which originates from Paulo Freire, one of our inspirations at EFA. Here is the code, which is a picture of the story from the week before: Continue reading →

50 EFA students, teachers and supporters came together on Saturday 15th October to discuss Brexit, its impact on our communities and plan action in response.

Why did we organise Brexit Day?

Before the referendum EFA teachers spoke to their students about Brexit. We understood that many people were worried about Brexit and the future. Staff and trustees discussed and decided to join the Remain campaign. We felt that staying in the UK would be the best thing for the UK and especially for our students, many of whom are EU migrants.

The result of the EU referendum is having a massive impact on ESOL teachers and students. This post is mostly for ESOL teachers as they try to be supportive and hopeful when they are probably in need of support and hope themselves.

Teachers at EFA have been sharing our lessons, our students’ thoughts and our own worries and hopes over the last week and we wanted to reach out to other teachers. Here are some of the questions we have been asked by students and teachers have been asking each other:

What will happen to EU citizens in the UK?

Will there be another referendum?

What will happen to freedom of movement between EU countries in the future?

How can we oppose racism and xenophobia most effectively?

What can we do to support students who are scared about the future?

How can we help to rebuild our communities after such a divisive campaign and response to the result?

We only have the beginnings of answers to some of these questions and will continue to explore them with our students, colleagues and allies. In terms of the first three questions, we won’t be campaigning for another referendum or for parliament to ignore the result, but we encourage everyone to fight for continued freedom of movement and the right to remain for all EU migrants already here. This is a big issue for our students. Hope not Hate, among others, are lobbying the Tory leadership campaign candidates (after all it will likely be the new Conservative leader doing the negotiations) to accept the right to remain.

The fourth question is an urgent one. We would urge all students (and teachers of course) to report hate crime if they experience it. Perhaps it’s a good idea to share information about how to do that. Perhaps this video, from Stop Hate UK, would be good to show in class too?

In terms of the fourth and fifth questions, there is a tension to be found however between tooling people up for the sometimes unpleasant and dangerous world we belong to and scaring people or making people feel depressed? ESOL should be a safe space for students as well as a space to discuss and challenge injustice. Our approach is to be gentle, to ask students how they are feeling rather than launching into a “Brexit” lesson. If you plan to tackle the issues, then it’s worth having a plan b lesson under your sleeve in case the vibe you are getting is “can we please not talk about it?”. Remember also that some of our students will have voted “leave” and they should not be made to feel like the enemy. Our experience over the last week however is that students do want to talk about it. So what works?

Perhaps start the class with a round where everyone says how they feel. Do some language work about these feelings.

If people say they don’t feel welcome anymore, remind them that in their local community they are welcome (this works better in some areas than others and all EFA classes are in inner London boroughs) and in their ESOL class they are EXCEPTIONALLY welcome. This last point drew some smiles last week.

Analyse the issue in small groups. People are less exposed this way and can say what they think. If people are upset they are better able to control their participation than in a whole group situation. They might feel more comfortable about expressing their feelings too. Here are some picture prompts: eu referendum pictures.

Create a group writing about the situation. Here is one created by Joanna’s class in Hackney:

” We are worried. The economy is down. Lots of people apply for residency. They are worried because if they don’t have residency, maybe they can’t have a job in future. And if people can’t come from other European countries, no more cleaners and builders in London.

Also, some Colombian people lived here a long time and they have a British passport. On Facebook, they tell new people from Spain and Italy to go home because they are on benefits. It is not good”

Why not try a Brexit problem tree? This worked really well in Becky’s class in Bow. The roots of the tree are the causes, the branches the consequences and the fruit the action we can take.

Discuss and anaylse action. Give students a chance to talk about what action they would like to take (if any). Joanna has prepared these materials about the demonstration last weekend.

Finally, hope for the future and re-building our communities? We must join together with other groups fighting for the same things. We must continue to fight against the cuts that are likely to get worse. These anti-austerity struggles must involve migrants. Communities can be built through struggling together for our rights and there will need to be stronger struggles than ever before. ESOL needs to reach out to campaigning groups and vice versa. ESOL teachers, you are in the right place at the right time! Let us continue to build safe spaces and powerful groups. They have never been more needed.

In recent years, one of EFA’s most requested class topics has been housing. Many of us are suffering from precarious housing situations and experiencing the London housing crisis first hand. EFA has responded by collaborating with groups like Housing Action Southwark and Lambeth, where students attend regular meetings to discuss housing problems and who have run housing rights sessions in our classes.

We have listened to an array of stories including severe overcrowding, disrepair and a landlord even demanding that an EFA student pay for their own bailiffs.

EFA student Kenza in Southwark told us about her shocking housing situation. Earlier this month, Kenza, her husband and her two sons (two years and four years) were made homeless. After long and difficult interviews, they were provided temporary accommodation in a hostel.

On arriving at the hostel, they found the property had not been cleaned since the previous tenant had moved out, the mattress was brown with dirt. Kenza and her husband checked the room to make sure it was safe for their children and were shocked to find drawers full of syringes, they also found blood on the wall.

Syringes found in the hostel

This is unsuitable and dangerous accommodation for anybody, let alone a family with two children under five. Kenza asked the agent to clean the property, and when they refused, she asked the council to clean it. The council said if the agent didn’t do it, there was nothing that they could do.

In the end, Kenza had to clean the property, potentially endangering herself by clearing out hypodermic needles. It took her days of hard work.

Kenza, with the support of English for Action, is calling on Southwark Council to accommodate her and her family in safe and suitable housing.

This situation sadly is not an isolated case, not only do we want Kenza to be rehoused, but we also want the London Borough of Southwark to address some wider questions:

Why is the London Borough of Southwark providing and paying for sub-standard accommodation?

What commitments can Southwark council make us in order that no other homeless people have to go through the same ordeal as Kenza and her family?

Blood on the walls

Join us in calling on Southwark Council to rehouse Kenza and her family in safe and suitable accommodation: